2024-04-06

• If you share your [[commonplace book]] to the knowledge commons, is it then a [[commonsplace book]]?

• [[work]]
• [[flancia]]
• [[cleaning]]
• [[danger]] codes

2024-04-05

• [[Listened]] to [[Nathan Schneider on Building Democratic Governance on the Internet]]
  • Love this interview of [[Nathan Schneider]] by [[David Bollier]]. New book out, [[Governable Spaces]]. Sounds like a synthesis of a bunch of recent papers (e.g. [[Governable Stacks]]).
  • Main thesis is about the need for inclusion of democracy in our everyday online tools. To avoid '[[Implicit feudalism]]'.
  • [[Decidim]] referenced favourably.
• And [[listened]] to [[Building human economies using technology]]
  • Bit of a sprawling rambling discussion, but still interesting talking points. Technology, communism. [[Telekommunisten]]. Struggles of leftist tech to get a real foothold. [[Theory of value]].

2024-04-04

• I'm getting more into the groove with [[fish]] on desktop the more that I use it.

  • Still a slamdunk win on Termux.

• I would just like to take a moment to lament the fact that I have received an email inviting me to become a Certified Generative AI Specialist.

• Idle thought: maybe the world would be a better place if the de facto 'learn to code' tutorial was not a todo list (individual productivity) but a simple group poll (collective decision-making).

2024-04-03

• A bit more on [[Testing my org-export customisations with ERT]].

2024-04-02

• Had a quick read about [[Passkeys]].

• Listened to [[Platforms for Public Good w/ Mathew Lawrence & Thomas Hanna]]

• [[deutsch]]

2024-04-01

• [[Listened]] to [[Hotel Bar Sessions: Whose Anthropocene?]]

  • Good discussion - is [[Anthropocene]] a useful term? Maybe [[Capitalocene]] works better? Maybe both have their uses. Good overview of the pros and cons of both.
  • There's a geological definition of Anthropocene (descriptive), which is interesting and all, but perhaps of more genuine use is it as a definition that motivates us to act to mitigate climate catastrophe (prescriptive).

• Also [[listened]] to [[Envisioning Platform Socialism w/ James Muldoon]]

  • Great discussion. Loads of good stuff in there, listened while doing chores so not much in the way of notes, warrants a relisten.
  • [[Platform Socialism]]. [[Guild socialism]]. [[Subsidiarity]]. Some things best as worker coops, some local municipality, some national. Some global. Global digital services. Take Google into global public ownership?
  • [[DECODE]].

2024-03-31

• Went for a walk and [[listened]] to [[The Silicon Empire in Eastern Europe (ft. Erin McElroy)]]
  • [[Silicon Valley Imperialism]].

• Following a stumble through the garden related to [[technology and political economy]], re-reading [[The Telekommunist Manifesto]].

  • [[political economy of network topologies]]
  • [[political economy of free software]]

• Also plan to re-read [[The British Digital Cooperative: A New Model Public Sector Institution]].

2024-03-30

• [[Adding planted and last tended dates to pages in my digital garden]] not as straight forward as it could be.
  • Using it as an opportunity to get familiar with ERT. [[Testing my org-export customisations with ERT]].
  • Should be simpler to write against small tests rather than having to go through the whole publish pipeline.

2024-03-29

• Late night [[listened]] to [[What’s the Value of Data? (ft. Salomé Viljoen)]]

  • [[Social data]].
  • Has [[predictive value]].
  • Three ways to extract [[surplus value]] with it:
    • 1. Just sell it on, e.g. data broker
    • 2. Use it to exploit people based on knowledge from the data
    • 3. Use it to exert power (e.g. Uber's [[Greyball]] program)

• Also listened to [[The Supermarket into Prison Pipeline]]

• Pretty much always find [[This Machine Kills]] interesting, whatever the topic.

• Thinking about how I would go about [[adding planted and last tended dates to pages in my digital garden]].

• [[AG]] :)
• [[Lady Burup]] :)
• [[friends]]
• [[work]]
• [[party]] prep
• [[colleen]]

2024-03-28

• I've been picking up the [[guitar]] again regularly recently, for the first time in a long time. And I'm really enjoying it. Drop D tuning and finger picking. Still got the muscle memory for basic chords and picking patterns. Relistening to some [[John Fahey]] too.

2024-03-27

• Re: [[using org-mode for timeblocking]] and [[trying out calfw-blocks]], noticed that someone (haji-ali) has forked and updated both [[calfw]] and [[calfw-blocks]].
  • https://github.com/haji-ali/emacs-calfw
  • https://github.com/haji-ali/calfw-blocks/
  • Might be worth making use of these. Have a read through the fork changelogs.

• [[work]]
• [[social coop]]:
  • [[social coop organizing circle]]

2024-03-26

• Further to [[trying out org-timeblock]], I'm now [[trying out calfw-blocks]].
  • As part of a general attempt to be able to do timeblocking in org-mode. ([[Using org-mode for timeblocking]]).
  • I wouldn't say it's going swimmingly… but I'm learning plenty about spacemacs layers, doom config, and use-package. So that's something.

2024-03-25

• Although in general it feels the same (possibly slower? because I didn't compile it myself?), one thing that is much faster in Emacs 28 is the parsing of my huge Tasks.org file for work. Thumbs up.

  • [[What's new in Emacs 28?]]

• I'd like to tweak my garden a bit such that I have 'planted' and 'last tended' dates on each page.

  • I already have 'This page last updated: …' at the bottom of every page.
  • But I'd prefer it right at the top. Not too prominent/distracting, but I have some pretty old pages knocking around now and I'd like people to be aware that they might be outdated.

• [[org-timeblock]] looks pretty good and like it'd fill my desire for a timeblocking tool for org-mode.

  • I used to use [[Goalist]] on Android and it was great, but I got annoyed that I couldn't sync it and make use of it anywhere else.
  • So… [[trying out org-timeblock]]. However, hitting a bunch of issues from the beginning.

2024-03-24

• We [[watched]] [[Soul]] again.

  • Such a lovely film. Heartwarming message, great music, great visuals, funny for the whole family.

• I [[listened]] to [[What Social Media Meant for the Mass Protest Decade w/ Vincent Bevins]]

  • [[Vincent Bevins]] again on his book [[If We Burn]].
  • Really interesting stuff.
  • I like the very loose analogy between what happened to the internet and what happened to [[the movement of the squares]].
  • Basically a form of [[The Tyranny of Structurelessness]] in both.

• Also listened to [[Why Tech Makes Us More Insecure w/ Astra Taylor]]

  • [[Insecurity]] and [[security]] - in more of social and psychological meanings of the word than the technical sense.
  • Claim: [[Capitalism requires insecurity]].
  • Claim: [[Social insurance is a bulwark against insecurity]].
  • Also by Astra: [[The Dads of Tech]] and [[The People's Platform]].

• We have [[national insurance]] in the UK.

  • Wonder when it was introduced?

• Never really thought much about insurance before.

  • Superficially it seems a boring topic. But this and Jathan Sadowski podcast discussion ([[How the World Became Uninsurable]]) recently making me realise it's kind of fundamental and sadly mostly privatised.

• Returning a little to [[IndieWeb]] for following activity streams. I had been using the Fediverse for a while, but I find it a bit too fast paced, a bit too attention grabbing. For me. IndieWeb is kind of slow social media and that suits me fine.

• hyperorg could be useful for me.

  • Either for publishing wiki to web, or could be a useful internal parser for the Agora? Python based.

2024-03-23

• Listened: [[Yanis Varoufakis, "Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism"]]

  • Great interview with [[Yanis Varoufakis]].
  • [[Techno-feudalism]].
  • Ultimate goal: socialisation of cloud capital (i.e. [[Big tech]])
  • Only America and China have cloud capital.
  • Glad they mention [[McKenzie Wark]] - Varoufakis says he agrees with all of it.

• [[Listened]]: [[Democracy for sale, Europe’s first black leader + tea with Obama]]

  • [[Political donations]].
  • New first minister of Wales is first black leader of a country in Europe.
  • [[Rwanda bill]].

• [[Listened]]: [[Black Box: Episode 6 – Shut it down?]]

  • [[Eliezer Yudkowsky]] with AI doonerism.
  • Alternate positive view from Alex Hern.
  • One disappointment with the series as a whole is there's no mention of environmental impact or questioning of who owns AI technology.

2024-03-22

• [[Listened]]: [[The silencing of climate protesters in English and Welsh courts]]

  • Latest in a long line of crackdowns on defences that climate protesters can use in the courts.
  • One of which made it an offence to use the words 'climate change' in court.

• [[Listened]]: [[Vulture Capitalism - Exposing the toxic system and how to outgrow it with Grace Blakeley]]

  • Interesting interview and book sounds worth a read.
  • A lot sounds like analysis of problems, but they talk about some potential solutions and examples too. ([[Cooperation Jackson]], [[Blaenau Ffestiniog]], [[The Lucas Plan]])

• Read: [[‘It’s Not Rocket Science – It’s Just Community’: Radical Ffestiniog]]

  • My great grandad was from [[Blaenau Ffestiniog]]. Nice to have this little connection.

• [[work]]
• followed by [[fellowship of the link]]
• followed by [[fediversalist papers]]
• followed by [[feierabend]] :)

2024-03-20

• [[Listened]]: [[Black Box: Episode four – Bing and I]]

• [[Listened]]: [[Black Box: Episode 5 – The white mask]]

• [[Listened]]: [[Hotel Bar Sessions: Immediacy (with Anna Kornbluh)]]

• [[Listened]]: [[Novara FM: Not Westminster’s Whipping Boys w/ Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram]]

2024-03-19

• I donated to the [[Amazon UK warehouse workers' strike fund]] again.

  • https://www.foxglove.org.uk/campaigns/amazonstrikefund/
  • They are out on strike today again.

• [[Public interest technology and its origins]]

  • [[Public interest technology]]

• [[work]]
  • lunch with the [[ER-CH]].
  • then some meetings and some focus time! pretty alright :)

2024-03-18

• Listened: [[Black Box: Prologue: The collision]]

  • Woman begins dating an AI, finds genuine positivity from it. She suffers from CFS/ME and has to shield from COVID. Presenter talks about 'AI vertigo' - dizziness is what is coming with AI. The 'collision' of the title refers to the collision between artificial intelligence and us humans. We being the first generations to truly experience it.

• Listened: [[Black Box: Episode one – The connectionists]]

  • Potted history of AI. [[Perceptron]]. [[AI winter]]. [[Geoff Hinton]]. The connectionists. ImageNet victory by [[AlexNet]]. [[AlphaGo]].

• Listened: [[Black Box: Episode three – Repocalypse now]]

  • Replika, the AI companion app. What happens when they update it and mess up people's companions. A bit like [[site deaths]] but even worse.

• Listened: [[The Problem With America’s Ban on TikTok]]

2024-03-17

• Read: [[The digital revolution has failed]]

  • "as the web declines, we need to consider what a better alternative could look like and the political project it would fit within"
  • Right on. That would be [[digital ecosocialism]] in my view.

• [[Generative AI has a ferocious environmental impact]].

• [[Generative AI is further concentrating power with Big Tech]].

• Watched: [[Miners’ Strike 1984: The Battle For Britain]]

  • Shocking, the violence that was meted out by the police on picketing miners. Seemingly premeditated.
  • Then perjury.
  • All seemingly coming directly from the wishes of Margaret Thatcher.
  • The media apparently complicit, a piece of state apparatus.

• Watched: [[Avengers: Civil War]]

• [[fediversalist papers]]
• [[AI]]
  • I spoke to [[Gemini]] about the [[Agora]] :)
    • [[Gemini Agora]]

2024-03-16

• Listened: [[Medium Anxiety]]

• Listened: [[How an infamous ransomware gang found itself hacked]]

  • Fun story.
  • [[Ransomware]].
  • I did not know that [[WannaCry]] was by the North Korean state.

• Listened: [[What do the Tories consider extreme?]]

• [[Distributed digital gardens]].

• Watched: [[Ant-Man]].

• I can't seem to find an [[IRC bouncer]] that you can easily install on [[YunoHost]]…

• spoke to [[Jack Park]] about [[Topic Maps]]!

2024-03-15

• [[What would AI for the people look like?]]

  • My biggest problem with AI are its environmental impact and the fact that it is in the hands of a cabal of big tech firms using it to turn a profit.
  • Is there a way it could be retained? Publicly owned, democratically governed, socially useful, and existing within planetary boundaries?

• Watched: [[Miners’ Strike 1984: The Battle For Britain]]

  • Episode 2. Focuses on the [[Battle of Orgreave]].
  • [[Police brutality]]. [[State violence]].

• Read: [[A Modern Anarchism (Part 1): Anarchist Analysis]]

2024-03-14

• Read: [[Reframing and simplifying the idea of how to keep a Zettelkasten]]

  • Really nice summary from Chris of the minimum that you need to do to keep a 'zettelkasten'. He cuts through a lot of the unnecessary complexity that has appeared around this.

• Contemplating whether I should send webmentions from my digital garden.

  • Maybe, maybe not.
  • There's plenty of ways to send webmentions from a static site, plenty of people doing it.
  • So I could, but I wonder if I should.
  • Perhaps webmentions should only be sent when I post a more considered long-form article, or when I post something to my stream.
  • Not sure.
  • [[Should I send webmentions from my digital garden?]]

• Listened: [[How to talk about avoiding waste, with Keep Britain Tidy]]

  • Most people think recycling is all you need to do to prevent waste.
  • Reframe the message and move people's consciousness up the waste hierarchy.
  • [[Buy Nothing New Month]].
  • Really interesting discussion around societal norms and reuse (e.g. what happens when you give second-hand presents at kids' birthday parties…)

• Listened: [[Black Box: the hunt for ClothOff – the deepfake porn app]]

  • Scumbags make app to deep fake nudes of women and girls.
  • The Guardian tracks them down.

• [[Updating to Emacs 28 on Linux Mint]].

  • This time, using a PPA rather than building from source like last time ([[Installing Emacs from source]])
  • I had to manually, naughtily, uninstall the old Emacs binaries from usr/local/bin that had been built from source in order for the new emacs28 binaries from the PPA to be picked up.
  • And, of course, not it's a new version of Emacs, spacemacs has to get all the packages from MELPA again…

• I updated packages on Mint like a good boy, and now I'm getting complaints from composer when building a project.

  • [[nette/schema v1.2.3 requires php >=7.1 <8.3 -> your php version (8.3.3) does not satisfy that requirement.]] etc.
  • Good-o.

2024-03-12

• Kickstarted the [[spacemacs]] / spacemacs packages update dance.

  • Because of the [[error "Invalid type in command series" from org-super-agenda]].
  • As always, kind of wish I hadn't. [[Updating spacemacs 2024-03-12]].

• I created a [[quick function to help extract bold sections from text into bullet points]].

  • Most narrative text is usually just verbose prose around a few relevant points.
  • So when I'm parsing some text, I bold the relevant bits.
  • Then I pull those out to review them as bullets.
  • This function helps quickly pull the bold text into bullets.
  • Love the fact you can so easily configure Emacs to do this kind of thing!

• [[work]]
• [[ai]]
  • TIL about [[unsloth]]
  • will try to focus this week on colab-style work, organizing a [[hackathon]]
• [[social.coop]]
  • [[moderation]]
  • [[registrations]]
• read about [[p5js]]: https://davidmatthew.ie/p5js-vs-html-canvas/
  • [[pixi]] looks alright
  • [[easel]] seems unmaintained/abandoned
  • I think 'bare canvas' might be a better idea for now?
• [[abelard.org]]

2024-03-11

• [[Listened]]: [[Brian Merchant, "Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech"]]

• [[Spam]].

  • Our website is experiencing an uptick in spam over the last few days.
  • Incredibly irritating.
  • With comments like 1*if(now()=sysdate(),sleep(15),0).
  • We have Akismet and a honepot enabled. Adding a very noddy manual captcha (e.g. 4+8 = ?) helps. But if it continues, we'll probably have to enable ReCaptcha. Which I'd prefer to avoid if possible.
  • Seemingly emanating from the same IP address.
  • The host lists an abuse@ address. But when I contact that address, the mailbox is reported as being full.